Video production is a great way to engage and expand an audience, whether it is for a blog, website or business venture.

Whether you’re an established blogger or simply trying to break into film production, developing a video requires the consideration of some key pieces before, during, and after the green light process.

If you’re thinking of diving into video production, the following tips may give you the edge you need to create the best video content without spending more than you need to.

Establish a budget

You can only imagine how often people will go into the production of a video and spend more than they have. This can be a disastrous situation, it’s best to avoid it and be smart. You want the video you’re making to be the first of many, not the last, so sit down and decide on a set amount of money you’re willing to spend on the production. This will save time and money in the long run.

Bonus Tip: It is important to map out the length of the production to estimate how long it will take to film. Quickness and efficiency will be an essential component to this process!

Think about your audience

Based on your business or interests there has to be a certain audience you want to reach with this production. Are you a musician trying to send a certain message or a small business attempting to reach those in the public that would benefit from your product? No matter what the message or purpose, there is an audience waiting for you to grab their attention.

Therefore, it is important to think about your audience before deciding the content of your video to ensure it is a piece of content they enjoy and like. Think about their interests, behaviours and what they like about your blog or business and be sure to incorporate these into the video in some way. This helps to ensure the video is relevant for your desired audience and is something they find enjoyable and interesting.

Storyboard your ideas

A beneficial part of this process is storyboarding as it allows you to organize the story you wish to tell and how you can visually achieve it. By analysing your video content frame by frame before filming, you will have an idea of what pieces of it work and can redesign the ones that might not. How can you determine this?

Look at the still frames and think, which ones enrich the emotion and theme of the content. Those are the ones you definitely need to include in your video.

Tools of engagement

While raw video footage is the skeletal structure of your project, video-editing effects are what allow the viewer to engage with the content and understand the overall message you’re trying to convey.

Remember the film “2001: A Space Odyssey?” Near the beginning of the film, ‘The Dawn of Man’ segment shows apes violently using bones to beat each other and then the bone is thrown into the air. Then the frame immediately cuts to a space satellite, four million years later! Kubrick makes a match cut from one time period to the next. What he’s trying to relay to the viewer is that humanity at one time was primitive and now views itself as technologically advanced.

An effect used largely in the “Star Wars” film franchise by George Lucas is the wipe effect. This is utilized when a scene ends where a line wipes the previous scene away on screen and simultaneously reveals the next scene.

Why use this effect? It can establish an emphasis on events taking place linearly, allowing for action to blend with more action in two different places.

Be original

The single, most important thing you can do to arrive at the best video content possible from a production is to be original. Standing out from the crowd and avoiding secondary ideas will show in the final product, presenting the world with a video that is unlike anything else is the goal of any video production. Never forget to keep in mind “originality” above all else.

Now it’s up to you to take the necessary steps towards your successful video production. Believe in yourself and do your best to enjoy the process from start to finish. Careful planning pre-production is key, if you want it to go as smoothly as possible and remember the purpose of your video and the audience it is being aimed at, at all times during production. Ultimately, originality and relevance are the two most important features of a video. As long as it is something relevant to your target audience that they haven’t seen before they are sure to love it.

Robert Benoit is an intern at Phink TV who is currently studying English Writing and Mass Communication at Assumption College. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and is currently studying abroad in London. His future aspirations include film production and professional scriptwriting, as well as a passion for developing creative works.

Videos don’t have a magic wand, as believed by certain marketeers (both amateurs and seasoned ones).

Threading video marketing success is hard work, and requires a fair bit of creativity. While it’s true that video content can enhance engagement at a much greater rate than its more static counterparts, if quality is being compromised, your video marketing endeavor isn’t going to get as far as it could. And the reason is simple enough – as opposed to the other forms of advertising, video marketing is expensive, and thus, not hitting the goals is a much nastier burn.

The right video should be a mix of things – all of which have to be in the right amount. Now, we don’t want to make it sound like an overwhelming undertaking, but if you want your video marketing campaign to bring in huge numbers for you, the are quite a few must-follow practices to be kept into account:

Get the First Impressions Bang on

You know what they say about judging a book by its cover, right? Likewise, the featured image that is displayed until the play button isn’t hit is what entices users to hit the button in the first place. Intrigue them with the featured poster and you are assured a greater number of clicks.

Make Originality Your Strong Suit

Like any content marketing strategy, there are a truckload of done-to-death things attempted for video promotion. You need to inject a degree of uniqueness to your concept, make it entirely original, for people to find it novel.

Animations Draw People

Instead of live motion or overtly-flashy 3d renditions, if you are using hand-drawn characters, your video hs a better chance of being liked more.

Avoid the auto-play

We understand you want to make sure the lazy users do indeed watch the video, but nobody likes it when they are surfing the Internet and all of a sudden a song plays from some tab on your browser and you have no idea which one it is. You either turn your desktop sound off, or you simply hit the close button the tabs playing the sound. That’s what’s gonna happen with the auto-play button on your video. So, instead of this, go back to the first point.

Get the idea across in 30-60 seconds

If there is one strong suit of our Internet audience, it is their lack of patience. Now even if they find a piece of video interesting, you can trust them to fast forward the seek bar and make it skip a few seconds if the video extends beyond a few minutes. Engaging the viewer so as to boost your conversion rate can be done even in 30 seconds. So make it short and sweet.

Keep it Pixel Rich

HD videos are the order of the day. When your audience doesn’t find ‘720p’ option on the resolution button, they are most likely going to switch to a video that has it – and that won’t be yours.

Have you taken into account the costs you will have to incur while developing the video content? If that’s a worry for you, you can get quality videos developed at pretty cost efficient rates. But if you wish to take along all the licensing costs, then be ready to invest big.

Storytelling is what will glide you past the fluff on the Internet. If your video is a combination of a dozen things banged up together, without any sense of story, you are doing a great deal of disservice to your efforts and aspirations. The script should tell a story that symbolizes your brand in one way or other.

Don’t be too mainstream. Everyone has seen those thronging crowds surrounding the product that rises from the ground up or for that matter, the glowing logo that dwarfs everything else. Be more creative, even if that means being grounded. Today, subtlety works in mysterious ways. Stay true to the underlying message the brand is trying to across and keep everything fuss free so that the video makes an instant personal connection with the audience.

The image files used in the video should be bale to make a connect as well, and it should look authentic. Don’t put a vintage picture for a video promoting an iPhone (unless the ‘story’ asks for it).

Self-Hosting Instead of YouTube?

When all is said and done, have you given a thought to self hosting the video instead of posting it on YouTube? I mean, when the video is indexed on the search engines, why should you send your audience to YouTube, instead of to your your site. And there are much better conversion rates on videos hosted on business sites, since unlike YouTube, users won’t be tempted to click on the other recommended videos on some totally new channel.

In either case, the keyword used along with the video will play a huge role in determining how well it is indexed on search engines and the volume of organic visits you are receiving. Promote video across different channels and implement the alternative ways of content marketing like promoting through Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus in order to get eyeballs for the video. The more ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ you get on the video, the more chances you stand of getting greater number of eyeballs for the same. If you are uploading a video on YouTube, a transcript would work excellently. In the transcript, you can give a detailed description of what the video is all about, and you can make this description optimized for SEO. Get all the keywords right there in their right measure. And apart from self-hosting and YouTube, you can also try other popular networks like Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Break.

Scripting success through video marketing, as iterated before, has to be a mix of certain to-be-followed rules and set of methods that are somewhat of a rarity in this genre. Get things in order before you get them to work.

Amy Brown is a web developer by profession and a writer by hobby. She works for WordPrax a WP development company and as a blogger, she loves sharing information regarding WordPress customization tips & tricks.

This is a guest contribution from Praveenkumar Mavi, of Just2clik Blog

YouTube is a widely-used search engine for videos its value shouldn’t be underestimated. There are millions of videos daily uploaded onto YouTube, so it is very important to optimize your videos at their top level to get more hits and even front page ranking. To do this, we need to keep in mind a few important points:

1. The first and most important thing is keyword setup. This, of course, depends on your video content. Let us assume 3-4 titles for your video and start searching on Google. If you find videos in the search results of your title, then go for one of the other titles until you’ve found no other (or nearly no other) videos with the same name. Then assign this title to your video.

2. The second step is to describe your video. Your video description should contain your video title, this helps to show in bold on search results. You should also be very clear in your description and try to include as much information as you can without turning it into a long-winded and confusing blurb. Attracting description results in more hits for your video.

3. Tags are the third step – assigning tags to your video is as simple as copy and paste. For example if your video title is ‘Simple steps to optimize your Facebook fan page’ then your tags should be Facebook, simple steps, optimization, Fan page, etc.

4. Upload high definition videos if you can. Don’t go for standard definition videos, because YouTube wants to provide best possible experience for end users, and will prioritize those in HD. This really plays an important role in ranking your videos.

5. The most killer tip for optimizing your video content is to generate a transcription for your video. Include subtitles for your video. Create a 300-400 word description in the transcription, and more importantly add your website URL at the top/bottom of your description. This will help the end user to understand what your video content is about.

6. Finally, promote your video by sending emails with a link to your video and to your channel subscription. Try to respond to comments.

Praveenkumar is the Founder and editor of Just2clik Blog, In this blog you’ll find a very simple yet more effective tutorials about blogging, Computers and Mobiles. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

Conference founder, Chris Guillebeau, gave me the brief of sharing my story and to share some tips and ideas for helping people to lead remarkable lives in a conventional world. He also said he didn’t want me to just talk about blogging – a task I found very refreshing!

I spoke on the topic of ‘Getting Dreams out of Your Head‘ and covered quite a bit of ground. In this video you’ll see my full keynote and hear about:[Read more…]

Does it make sense for blog owners to include video in their posts? It sure does!

Your posts should include all types of interesting content to engage and entertain readers, and this can definitely include videos.

But rather than trying to do all of the work yourself, get smart about your time and consider outsourcing your video content by partnering with a reliable provider.

Research for reliability

How can you find a reliable service? You do your homework.

First of all, consider how much content you will need each month, as this will help you determine the costs you can expect to pay for each service.

You will also want to ask about content storage volumes and delivery.

Support is an important issue. Find out whether you would contact the provider by email or phone, and how long you would have to wait to get a response if you need to rely on email as the preferred contact method.

Price is another important consideration for any business owner, and you need to make sure that you are getting good value for the money you’re spending. Consider the following services if you are interested in outsourcing your video content in addition to writing posts.

In finding companies to consider, ask other bloggers for recommendations. Word of mouth can be a great way to find the service that you need.

The companies you are considering should have samples of their work posted online that you can review. When you are checking them out, make a point of looking at the quality of the sound and lighting. These two factors will tell you whether you will be getting a good quality product.

A few options

Here are a few outsourced video services that I’ve come across, and which you might like to consider.

The Viddler video platform allows users to upload videos one at a time or in batches. You can record your video from your webcam directly into your Viddler account.

It’s an easy and convenient method for getting your message out to your readers. This company has been in business for six years and has processed over 22 million minutes of video since its inception.

It offers iTunes syndication and RSS feed, as well as embeddable widgets, so you can imbed your videos into your posts.

Pricing starts at $42.00 per month with an annual subscription. You also have the option of paying $50.00 on a month-by-month basis for this service. At this level, you would be provided with email support. Customers who choose a higher level of service would be entitled to email and phone support.

ReelContent is a UK-based company that offers video production services on location or in its studio. The company also offers editing services to its clients.

If are looking for highly polished video content to complement the blog posts you are writing, you may want to consider this type of option. The company has experience shooting content for news items, reviews, interviews, guides, and product demonstrations.

BlissMediaWorks targets the small and medium-sized business market. The company offers flexible video services that can be adapted to suit your needs.

Services include adding real footage, graphics, and animated text into a video. They can even include music and sound effects if you wish. The company will even post a video direct to YouTube as a special service to drive traffic to your blog.

Audio Concepts offers web videos as one of its services. If you are looking for a way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, adding a series of videos to your blog is an effective way to enhance your online reputation.

Invite visitors to visit your blog to view the next installment to get more information about the topic you are discussing. This is an excellent way to tell a story and really connect with your visitors.

If you know what you want in a video service, and are prepared to review multiple quotes for your video project, you can post it on SmartShoot.

This online marketplace will connect you with filmmakers and photographers who will put up bids for your job. You then choose who you want to work with.

What are you waiting for?

Adding video to blog posts is an excellent way to give your writing a boost. You can connect with your readers in a new way, and give the search engines something different to index from your blog.

This type of content is, of course, very popular with readers and may result in more shares on social networking sites. If your goal is to have more people liking your posts on Facebook, stumbling them on StumbleUpon, or tweeting them on Twitter, you will want to include video content on your blog more often.

It’s a good idea to get in front of your audience to let them see and hear from you, too. People want to know what you look and sound like so they can get to know you.

If your goal is to be seen as an expert to promote your business and get higher conversion rates for a product or a service, you need to be seen as someone your readers know and trust. The video messages are a good way for you to accomplish this goal.

Finally, remember: your videos don’t need to be lengthy. Anything from 30 seconds to three minutes will give viewers a chance to get to know you. And focus on one main theme per video.

Over time, you will feel more comfortable making videos. Just pretend you are talking to a friend, which is exactly what you are doing. You’re just speaking to your readers instead of writing your message.

Leslie Anglesey is an educational specialist and editor at EssayTigers – service that provides professional paper writing tips for the students.

If you’re like me, you put a lot of time, effort, and thought into your YouTube videos. Even if you don’t, since YouTube is the second most searched engine in the world (and owned by the #1—Google), there is good reason to make the most of each upload.

Here are the 14 tasks bloggers should do whenever you upload a YouTube video to your YouTube channel.

Add an SEO-optimized title: Your YouTube video title is essential in helping your video be found, so use appropriate keywords.

Add an SEO description: Include a description that isn’t keyword stuffed, but does include your main keywords.

Add your website link to the description: If you have a website or blog, be sure to provide a link back to that. You can also include links to all of your social media channels. When posting links, be sure to include the “http” or the “https,” as that’s the only way YouTube can automatically hyperlink it.

Also, be sure that your main link is visible above “the fold”—in other words, above where the Show More section. Most people will not click on Show More, but will click on your main link.

Maximize your tags: so many people do not maximize the number of tags that they can have. Tags are your keywords, and they are critically important to being found. Include any relevant tags. Then, check back in a month or two to see how that particular video is being found—and change out some of the tags that are insignificant. For your long-tail keywords, be sure to include them within quotes, like “Business Blog Writers,” so that they’re searched as single phrases, rather than three separate words.

Post on Pinterest: In August, Krizia taught us How to Add Your YouTube Videos to Pinterest. Note that Krizia also suggests branding every video that you have on your channel because Pinterest allows people to watch the video directly on Pinterest. Unless they have motivation or reason to find out more, most viewers will not click through to your YouTube channel.

Like your video: The number of likes on your video helps it gain popularity, so by liking it, you’re just helping it get the attention of the audience you’re trying to target.

Share it on Facebook: Whether you have a Facebook page dedicated to your blog or website, or whether you just use your personal Facebook profile, you will want to share your video there for people to see. You never know who they will share it with—this is how many videos have gone viral. If you are posting a video that involves a company, take the time to tag them in the post with the video link.

Share It on Twitter: As usual, you want to shoot a link to your video out to all your Twitter followers. Be sure to include relevant hash tags and, if your video features a company and its product, then you definitely want to include their Twitter handle in the tweet too. For example, when I upload a product review for Floppycats, I then send out a Tweet like this, “Ragdoll Cats Chow Down on Eden Foods Bonito Tuna Flakes—Floppycats http://ow.ly/cU6Gp @edenfoods #cat #cats”.

Share it on Google+: YouTube is owned by Google and so is Google+. They like each other, so make sure they like your videos too.

Share it on LinkedIn (if appropriate): If your video is business-related and will help your efforts to grow your business, then you certainly want to share it on LinkedIn.

Schedule it to post on HootSuite monthly, for the next year: I like to come up with a Tweet or a Facebook posting for each new video, and reschedule them for release once a month for a year. As a blogger, it shows companies you’re promoting that you are looking to maintain your relationships with them, and also helps an old video enjoy new life every month.

Create a video response: Search for a video that is similar to yours, and rather than writing a comment about it, create a video response that will attract the audience you want.

Write a blog post and embed the video: More than likely you are trying to get Google to love your website and want to put it at the top of their search engine results. So make them love it more by embedding your YouTube videos into your blog posts.

Add it to a playlist: Whether you have already established playlists, or need a new one for this video, add it to a playlist using a relevant keyword from the video.

They’re the essential 14 steps, but are other things to do when you post a video, like adding annotations, asking people to subscribe, and adding transcripts, as Deepak covered in SEO Your YouTube Videos in 10 Steps.

What are some of the things that you do when you upload a video to YouTube? What would you add to this list?

This year was a land mark year for A Sitting Duck. What started as a blog and creative community has evolved into a limited company that is on track to publish a multi-platform game very soon.

As John mentioned yesterday, gaming is a large and growing niche, with a massive, very passionate audience. It’s a great space to operate in as a blogger, and a business person.

Top tips for succeeding in the video game niche

Over the last four years I’ve moved from illustrations to animations, and now to interactive gaming. I guess as a blogger/publisher the focus for me has always been to build engaging, free content which then makes it much easier to sell services and products.

Here are my tips to build a successful blog in the video game niche.

Start with big games: It’s really important if you want search engine traffic that you write reviews on (or otherwise cover) the big games up front. Sure, the big blogs in the niche will cover them, and they’ll probably get first position in the search results. But often, you can get hits from angles they didn’t cover, like “ How To Pass Level 50 On Angry Birds”.

Use big pictures and tweet them: By adding the picture from your latest blog post to Twitter, you’ll get instant attention—and the chance to suggest that there are more to look at over on your blog.

Embed game trailers from YouTube and describe what happens on the video: This is such an easy thing to do, and it’s sure to get you extra traffic that the video producers will miss out on, because they’re busy working on more videos!.

Make your own videos: It’s no surprise that top video game blog IGN Entertainment has produced thousands of videos: it works! Video gamers want to see how the game plays, and without actually playing it, a video is the closest they’ll get to the experience. Your best bet is to have a look around for a high-quality capture to stream, and save footage from the XBOX, Playstation, Wii and so on.

Trends do change with blogging, but from what I’ve seen in the video games market, the current popular formula is: upload a video to YouTube, produce a short post blog with extra images, tweet, and find another game to repeat the process with!

Monetization

Large video game blogs sell ad space, from a bespoke full skin (like Pocket Gamer), where they fully re-brand the home page to promote the sponsor’s game, to the regular box ads at a more reasonable price.

Monetization gets interesting when you look at the smaller blogs in this space (avergaing 5,000 – 50,000 hits a month). These guys usually go for the approach of selling paid reviews, where developers pay, say, $300 to look at your game and write a positive or neutral review of it (it’s never bad—hence the fee!).

If you did ten or more reviews a month, it would start to work out as a full-time salary. Pocketfullofapps.com is a great example of this approach in action, and that blog’s founder is looking to expand quickly over the coming year.

What are you waiting for?

Overall I’d say you should start off by building up your volume of blog posts and video catalog, as this market is very much focused on quantity rather than quality, thoughtful stuff.

Then, once you have that base, work with other active blogs on videos, get them in on the commentary, and you’ll have the kind of banter that really brings in the video views (thousands, and in some cases millions!).

So you’ve started using Pinterest to promote your blog. Congratulations!

When I started using Pinterest to promote my business, at first I was just happy uploading cool-looking photos. But after a few days, I realized that unless I established a clear strategy for my Pinterest activities, I’d be wasting a lot of time and I wouldn’t be able to delegate this social media activity to my assistant.

The reality is that Pinterest is a phenomenal tool for retailers, but if you’re a blogger or content marketer who uses words more than pictures, generating buzz using Pinterest may not be as easy.

From my experience, Pinterest can be a colossal waste of time. I mean it takes time to source all these photos on the Internet, and you also need to write descriptions for each of the photos you upload, and you also need to make sure you optimize everything you do to ensure the traffic comes back to your site.

But once I realized I could promote my YouTube videos on Pinterest, everything changed!

I’ve spent a lot of time, effort and energy building my YouTube channels and I’ve made sure each video we upload is optimized and takes viewers to a page where they can sign up to be added to my blog’s mailing list. Pinterest lets me capitalize on all that work, through a different medium. It’s become one of my favourite social media platforms to share videos from all four of my YouTube channels.

Adding your YouTube videos to Pinterest is quite easy, but if you’ve never done it before, I’ll share a few key points that will take the guess work out of the equation for you! Here are ten quick steps to getting your YouTube videos onto Pinterest.

1. Make sure you have an active YouTube channel

Pinterest is already set up to easily and quickly fetch videos from YouTube, but to use the functionality, you’ll need to have your own YouTube channel to make this work.

2. Make sure your videos are branded

Pinterest users don’t need to leave Pinterest to view YouTube videos. Once you click on any video link, it automatically opens inside the Pinterest platform. This is why branding your videos is so important.

By “branding” I mean that you should always have a branded intro and outro to your videos, and you should also make sure that you add an image watermark or a URL to make it easy for people to work out where the video comes from, and to click through to your blog.

3. Create a Pinterest board specifically for your YouTube channel

When you’re naming your board, make sure you take search engine optimization into consideration. Pinterest can bring you traffic from both inside its own community and from Google. That said, you’ll need to take the time to do a bit of research to find out which are the most appropriate keywords you should use.

4. Grab your YouTube embedded link

To crop your video into Pinterest, you’ll need to fetch your embedded link from YouTube. Right below your YouTube video, you’ll find a Share button. Click on that, and you’ll automatically see a dropdown box that contains a link.

A word of caution: there are two types of YouTube embedded links. There’s a shorter one (which is the first one you see), and a long link (which is hidden). Pinterest will reject the short link because the system sees it as spam. You’ll need to fetch the longer link.

5. Upload a new pin

In order to add a new video to Pinterest, you’ll first need to add a new pin, then copy your YouTube embedded link into the Add a pin box, like so:

6. Select the appropriate board

Remember in point #3 I suggested you create a board specifically for your YouTube videos? Well, once you’ve uploaded your video, you need to select the board you want your video featured on.

7. Add a description

You have 500 characters with which to describe your video. Make sure the copy is inviting, and that it includes a number of keywords related to your blog.

8. Add a link to your blog or squeeze page

You should also add the complete URL for your blog or squeeze page to the description box. This won’t just give your blog a backlink from a trusted source, it’s also a great way to make it easy for people to easily get to your blog or squeeze page.

By making all links active from the description box, Pinterest makes it easy for you to build a strong community of loyal followers!

9. Automatic sharing on Facebook

If you sign into your Pinterest account (the same holds true if you sign in using your Twitter account), all of your updates will automatically be added to your Facebook personal profile. Pinterest has systemized sharing content from their platform to other social media platforms, which, again, makes our lives easier!

10. Rinse and repeat

Now that you’ve added your first YouTube video to Pinterest, make sure you keep up a consistent flow. My assistant ads one new video each week to my Pinterest account.

Here, we’ve talked about uploading YouTube videos to Pinterest, but you can also upload videos from Vimeo and pretty much any other video directory.

There are a few undeniable advantages to adding video to your Pinterest account:

Your YouTube videos get a backlink from a trusted source, which helps increase the ranking of your entire channel.

Your video appears in three different locations on Pinterest: on your board, on the Pinterest homepage where all your followers can immediately see it, and also on the Videos page on Pinterest.

Pinterest users who land on your videos will know very quickly if your message resonates with them and from your YouTube channel they can make their way to your blog, site, or squeeze page.

Are you using video on Pinterest? How’s it working out? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Krizia (aka Miss K), is an Entrepreneur, Video Marketing Strategist, Video Show Host, Video Blogger, Speaker and International Author! Krizia launched http://www.CreateProfitableVideos.com to help entrepreneurs create AMAZING and IMPACTFUL video messages and discover How to Use video to Attract MORE Clients, Sales and Profits!

I love watching blooper reels at the end of movies. Sometimes they’re my favorite part of the whole experience. It’s nice to see that the multi-million dollar, polished product you just sat and watched was the product of lots of trial and error. It reminds you that actors are just people too, and yes, they sometimes get it totally wrong too! Let me share this series of my favorite bloopers from the show Friends to loosen you up and get those face muscles working.

Just like the movies, great online videos don’t just happen. I can’t count the number of times I have to remake even the most mundane of videos, usually because I stumble over the script, or the dog barks, or for some equally unentertaining reason.

Sometimes though, the mistakes can be better than the finished product.

People don´t spend their time watching boring monotone videos—they want something interesting. We love to connect with people online, and we want our audiences to feel something towards us. Whether they love us, respect us, or think we’re pee-your-pants funny, it’s all about making that connection. What makes you more real than the mistakes you make?

Bloggers all about being social and spreading the word. After reviewing hundreds and thousands of videos, I can say is that there is one thing most of us are trying to achieve: to make an audience feel like they’re part of something, so they (your potential customers, followers, friends) identify with whatever it is you’re trying to convey.

So next time you’re thinking about making a video, keep it simple and honest: showcase your bloopers and mistakes! Let your audience join you in the little jokes, engage people by being you, uncut!

Here are my top tips for putting bloopers to good use for your blog.

Build credibility

Be natural. If something comes out kind of funny, leave it! You’ll probably be surprised how many people with laugh along with you as you begin building up a persona through your videos. You can also try laughing at yourself a bit after the mistake, or apologizing in a playful manner.

Leave the viewer smiling

Why not take your cue directly from the movies and collect all your best bloopers to include at the end of your video? This can be particularly helpful when the video topic is educational or a little dry, as it leaves the audience with something to smile about, and a reminder that you really are just like them.

Best of

If you produce a lot of video content, an annual “Best Of” video can be a great opportunity to build engagement through bloopers. Whether you schedule it randomly, to fill in those quiet Christmastime days, or tie it in with another promotion, so long as you can make it truly funny, your audience is guaranteed to laugh along with you.

Don’t confuse crud with comedy

Keep in mind that there’s a fine line between simply making mistakes constantly and “blooping.” Knowing what you’re talking about and getting back on track without dragging on the joke for too long will make all the difference.

When people don’t know what they’re talking about, and don’t recover from their mistake, it can backfire and lose viewers. Take, for instance, this blooper video: it’s too much of the same thing, and constant re-takes.

You don’t want to waste people’s time, otherwise not only may you bore your audience, you might also have them run off for good!

Let them know you’re good first

It is very important that, before you show your audience your mistakes, you show them you know your topic. From there on, it’s smooth sailing!

The reason I bring this up is because when we make mistakes, we don’t necessarily mean to be funny. You could get stuck, or not know what you’re talking about, and this is not good.

But if you stumble over your words a little, add a friendly smile or short laugh, then pick up the pace, you’ll likely entertain the viewer and have them keep to your train of thought easily.

You, uncut

Enjoy your bloopers, they make it real! That authenticity and organic development is rare, and it could be your gateway to success. After all, there is very little we love to share more than laughter!

Do you use your bloopers in the videos you share with followers? Show us your best blooper links in the comments.

Carla lives and works in the tropical paradise of Costa Rica, and is the community manager and face of Looqiloo.com, where she helps video product reviewers look great on camera every day! Follow her on twitter @trendseeker and @Looqiloo.